Q. How is the 2008 production season going for your operation?
“This is the first year we have ever had to replant our bottom areas three times.

Expect each new year in the hay business to be either a short hay year or a long hay year.

Why rake? Before baling hay, raking is necessary for two reasons:

Pierce, Nebraska alfalfa producer, Bernie Wrede, has been cultivating western alfalfa and serving as a supplier for dairy farms in the eastern and southern United States for 18 years.

Large round balers are one of the most economical hay production systems because of low labor requirements.

Some caution is needed to prevent damage to established alfalfa fields from summer manure applications. The potential to damage alfalfa crowns, injure plant tissue due to salt toxicity, overapply nutrients or even transmit disease should be considered.

Have you seen the movie, The Phoenix?

What profitable dairymen know is that you’ve always got to be expanding to survive. Being progressive requires it. But what do you do when you can’t? Find a way. This issue is full of examples of producers who have done just that. For example, take the dairy featured on this month’s front cover. Nunes Dairy is a 1,000-cow dairy in Buhl, Idaho. I recently visited the facility and spoke with the dairy’s owner, Jason Nunes. While my primary purpose for visiting wasn’t to talk about his current building project, we spent a portion of my visit discussing why he was doing it.

Yet another challenge to a common dairy practice recently crossed my desk. This time it is a proposal by the USDA under the Animal Welfare Act to regulate how newborn calves are treated from birth to about eight weeks old. Though only a proposed rule, it does suggest issuing a rule for limitations on the transporting, even the removal from the mother during some or all of that period. This would not be good for dairy farmers. It is not the first such challenge to dairy farming. It joins those that claim dairy farmers mistreat their cows, employ the wrong people, feed the wrong feed, give the wrong drugs, mishandle the waste, waste water and, to some, produce an unneeded product. More will come. How dairy farmers respond to those complaints will determine whether or not and the degree by which dairying survives in America.

You have most likely heard the expression that bigger isn’t always better. In my conversations, I find that many dairymen tend to disagree with that statement. Economies of scale spread over sound management have allowed producers over the past five years to not only expand their herd size, but also their productivity (see Chart 1). And despite efforts to keep cow numbers at bay, growth has continued among varying geographies and herd sizes.